All the Light We Cannot See: Innocents in the crossfire

Novel explores lives of two youths during Second World War

Anthony Doerr is the author of All the Light We Cannot See.

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

Simon & Schuster

It seems a contradiction in terms, but Anthony Doerr’s novel All the Light We Cannot See is a lovely little book, despite being more than 500 pages long and covering the disturbing topic of children caught up in the Second World War.

Nonetheless, it is a beautifully written, touching and heartwarming story, with sympathetic characters who readers will love right from the beginning. The chapters are short, so they fly by, alternating between voices as the tale unfolds.

It is the story of a blind French girl, Marie-Laure, who lives with her father in Paris. He is the master of locks at the Paris Museum of Natural History, at least until Paris is occupied by the Germans and he and Marie-Laure are forced to leave for Saint-Malo, where a relative lives. To help her navigate the streets of both Paris and Saint-Malo, Marie-Laure’s father builds her a miniature model of their neighbourhoods.

A parallel story is about a young German orphan, Werner, who happens to be gifted at building and repairing things, most notably radios. This talent wins him a place at a special academy for Hitler Youth, where he witnesses acts of brutality, but where his abilities are allowed to blossom. When he is 16, he is told he is 18 and is therefore ready to fight for Germany.

Eventually, the pair’s paths collide in Saint-Malo, where a dangerous and valuable diamond also plays a role.

Unlike many books about the Second World War, this is not a novel of the Holocaust. There is one Jew featured in the story, but she is not a central character.

Instead, this novel takes ordinary people who are living in extraordinary times and reveals the effects of the war on their lives. Doerr, an American author living in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons, effectively shows how innocents on either side can be caught up in and have an effect on the violence of war. There are shades of grey when it comes to who bears responsibility for the deaths and violence in any war.

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are,” a German character says.

At another point in the novel, two characters who are part of the French resistance have the following exchange: “But we are the good guys. Aren’t we ...?” The other character answers: “I hope so. I hope we are.”

Doerr has written two story collections, Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won numerous prizes, including four O. Henry Prizes, three Pushcart Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize.

All the Light We Cannot See is a beautiful novel — made up of a compelling story that rushes to its inevitable conclusion, a cast of characters who are impossible not to love and admire, and a style of writing that is both poetic but straight to the point.

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